Hayden Carruth

Onondaga, Early December Poem by Hayden Carruth

lights in the twilight,lights of Solvay over the expanse of frozen snow-covered lake,orange lights of the refineries,yellow and green and red lights of the neon along the strip,lights as if undersea, the argon just coming to exist,all lights in the cold moisture of the grounded windstaggering across the lake at twilightare blurred, are meaningless, they call, together,with a sound unintelligible and of no interest;but in the slate sky above the imagined horizonlike an old lantern left long ago on top of a heap of slagthe evening star alone is bright and clearand alone responds to this knowledge of death too soonthat comes in the loneliness of twilight and dying wind,the loneliness of decayed and useless and ragged fearand the soundless cry for a thing that has no name. . . .